"The token is not working?" Eldrin's face instantly changed. After Liam, he was the fastest to catch on and his face paled as he stared at the humongous unruly crowd, waiting to devour them wholly.
"This... this is impossible," he muttered, his composure finally cracking. Liam inspected the token closely, but it was clear – the token was activated, yet they remained firmly rooted in place. Something was wrong. Something that he hadn't taken into account before.
He froze for a moment before he quickly regained his calm as he started churning the energies gathered inside his heart fruit. A dozen attacks flew at them but Liam was faster, as he erected one barrier after another, swiftly blocking most attacks.
By now most of the crowd realized what had happened and everyone geared up to take their shot. Rey, Madan and Lan Deming did not stand still and they too started assisting Liam in blocking the attacks being hurled at them.
But how could a mere five party team and Dante and two mortal nymphs defend against the slew of attacks aimed at them by numerous powerful beings? Most of them were awakened but clearly some of them were a step higher at the transcendent stage. They were completely surrounded on all sides, except for their backs that was still against the system shop.
When someone exited the system shop they had four seconds of immunity exactly for this kind of reason and their time had already run out. Every second now was only making their situation more and more perilious.
Rey, still in shock, mumbled, "How can this be? They blocked the teleportation token too?"
Madan nodded solemnly. "It seems they've thought of everything. We're dealing with someone who doesn't want us to escape at any cost."
Eldrin stepped closer to Liam. "Any other tricks up your sleeve?"
"You guys are utterly screwed." Dante jeered.
Eldrin snorted at him. "What do you think is going to happen to you when we go down?"
Dante's face changed. He would have tried to run away if not for the fact that the hungry monsters in front of them would instantly devour him without caring whether he was related to these lunatics or not. He had been roaming around with them for the past few days and that was enough to make him complicit.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. We are going to get fucking blasted to the moon!" He clutched his head, wondering why he was sucked into this mess for no reason.
Not just Dante, but panic started to set in among the rest of the group. They were standing in the open, exposed and vulnerable, with a sea of hostile faces surrounding them. A barrage of attacks were falling on them with Liam alone fending them off single-handedly. However, he did not have infinite mana supply.
Liam turned to quickly shove a few trinkets to the elf standing near him. "Quick. Equip them and activate the defense barriers." Eldrin gasped at Liam's collection of items, recognising the workmanship. These were clearly looted from his own world. They were powerful enough to buy them a few seconds but long could they possibly hold on by relying on mana barriers and trinkets?
Eldrin's gaze shifted to the little fox who was busy erecting fire walls that slammed down on the crowd closest to them. The fire was clearly imbued with the greater dao of the fire elemental as it held tremendous power and blasted away anyone who was not prepared to handle the aftermath.
But her actions did not give him any respite. Why was this beast not conjuring another portal? Whny was she fighting? He then remembered the two talking about some sort of cool down.
Fuck! Are we really screwed? His gaze darted to the monster living in human hide once again. Surely, Liam had some sort of a plan?
However, to his dismay, Liam only seemed to be interested in erecting mana barriers and trying to activate the same teleportation token again and again.
Eldrin's eyes went wide. The elf's shifty eyes darted here and there in the commotion, searching for something, anything when he finally spotted a thick slab of metal monolith.
"There! They are using a spatial distortion blocker! We will not be able to use any teleportation tokens!" He shouted in horror.
He could see that Liam was waiting out and checking to see if the teleportation token would work or not but in this case, that was only a waste of time, time that was extremely precious at the moment.
Liam turned to see in the direction that the elf pointed. It looked like what he was doing was really pointless. He did plan for a lot of moving parameters but he did not even know something monolith existed.
But he was still not done yet. His lips curved upwards as his gaze locked onto the young master of the Horned tribe who had brought down this disaster on them. He then took out the last item that he knew for sure would not miss its mark.
Liam did not want to use his last resort, especially after discovering so many new things in the system shop. However, it really did not look like there was any other option. Before things took a turn for the worse, he made his decision and activated the other token in his possession.
"I just told you! Spatial distortion has been blocked. No tokens will work!" Eldrin shouted but Liam remained calm. This monolith in front of him might prevent some paltry teleportation tokens to malfunction but could it really block the token that he was activating at the moment?
Eldrin's eyes widened along with the rest of the crowd as an unexpected ancient aura suddenly burst forth. The next second right in front of everyone's eyes the group of targets huddled in front of the system shop disappeared amidst shining runes.
Liam had crushed the token to the Spire of Ascension!